Do NOT use Magento for your Ecommerce site

by ryanjm
119 replies
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Just throwing this out there as a PSA for anyone that wants to build an Ecomm site for a small/medium sized business. I did a lot of research before I went with this platform, and I think it's been a mistake. While it offers a lot of flexibility and is scaleable, it is a nightmare of compatibility when you do try to customize it. Examples:

Oh, you installed this great dropshipping extension, and now you want to add the ability to let customers use multiple coupons? You'll need an extension for that, and custom coding to get it to work with the other extension. Oh, you think the default checkout sucks (it does), and you want a 1-step checkout? $200 for the extension, plus custom coding to get it working with your other extensions to the tune of $200 flat fee (usually).

It goes on and on. Literally almost every extension you install will have some sort of conflict with another extension and require the expertise of a programmer to get it working. The platform is just a money pit.

From what I can tell, if I did it over again I would go with Shopify. Let someone else make sure all of the extensions work together properly and even if you are somewhat limited, for 99% of businesses what they offer is enough. It would have saved me a lot of start-up costs and headaches to go that route.
#ecommerce #magento #site
  • Profile picture of the author FreshAndThemes
    Used Magento in the past i share your sentiments somewhat but you may get the same issues with whatever systems you use. I opted for WooCommerce for my latest venture as i can develop my own Wordpress extensions.

    Thanks for the heads up i was actually kicking myself for not going back to Magento... not now
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  • Profile picture of the author Nail Yener
    Originally Posted by ryanjm View Post

    Do NOT use Magento for your Ecommerce site
    I am not talking specifically about the tool you mentioned above but I don't think it is fair to make such comments especially if a tool works as advertised but it doesn't work as well as you want it to work when you start making customizations etc. Every tool has its own ways and limits when it comes to customization.

    Let's say I tried WordPress, installed one theme and two plugins and that resulted in a conflict and I paid hundreds of dollars to solve the issue and to customize it so that it would work the way I want it to work, should I then say "Do not use WordPress for your blogs"?
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    • Profile picture of the author qtech
      magento is also weak in scalability. Try to upload >50k products it will stuck, I had to switch to oscommerce which is simpler and much more robust.
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      • Profile picture of the author kjamesnv
        It goes on and on. Literally almost every extension you install will have some sort of conflict with another extension and require the expertise of a programmer to get it working. The platform is just a money pit.
        This is a completely misinformed statement. Of course there may be compatibility issues with different extensions but that is the exception and NOT typical.

        With our Magento install we have 13+ different extensions installed and only 1 times was there a minor issue which the vendor quickly fixed.
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        • Profile picture of the author ryanjm
          You guys must have gotten lucky then because I've installed around 7 extensions, and each one had a problem with another one. I've paid to fix issues 7 different times.
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  • Profile picture of the author aakon7
    This thread is a clear example of the blind leading the blind. Calling Magento trash is like calling a Lamborghini trash because you crashed it leaving the dealership cause you couldn't control it.

    Shopify? I wouldn't recommend that in a million years and I have been in ecommerce for a decade and worked for an ecommerce solution provider for 3 years.

    There are so many factors to consider when choosing an ecommerce solution that you can't just say go with '---' as a general statement. Everyone is at a different level and has different needs.

    Magento is one of the best solutions available today, however you have to use it correctly. For an ecommerce store doing a few million a year it most likely would be the perfect solution. Reading through the above comments and it is clear that many of you are using it wrong and/or not doing things correctly.

    - You need to put Magento on a optimized hosting environment first off and NO HostGator is not one of them lol this will solve your scalability issues if you know how to set up a server correctly and optimize it for YOUR needs and Magento's needs.
    - Complaining about Magento cause a third party plugin doesn't work? Really? If you are serious about ecommerce you will have your own programming team.

    Everyone has different needs and different solutions are created for those needs. Currently I am using Magento and love the solution cause I can make it do whatever I want it to, not to mention it is free!
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  • Profile picture of the author HarveyH
    I have found Pinnacle Cart to be very stable and reliable, great user interface and its extremely easy to work with, has all the features you need such as the one step checkout with lots of Payment options, very easy to setup, all social plugins, coupons basically everything.

    Its well worth checking out I think you can buy a license for around $600 or there is pay monthly option.
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      We looked at more than a dozen platforms about six months ago, testing each one before making a decision to go with BigCommerce. Absolutely none of them will do everything you want them to do and ALL of them will have conflicts from time to time when using programs from outside vendors.

      Every person's needs are different and what may be perfect for one person absolutely does not work for another. I can only recommend what we did - taking advantage of the free trials practically every shopping cart offers and giving them a quick test drive. One of them is sure to be close to what you ultimately want.

      Like aakon7, I would never use Shopfy, if for no other reason than I refuse to give them a percentage of all of my sales.

      Finally, I would be very hesitant to ever use anything that is not a hosted solution for eCommerce. There are no self-hosted solutions that are truly PCI Compliant.
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  • Profile picture of the author webcosmo
    Thanks for the info on Magento, but it`s the same with most of the opensource eCommerce softwares.
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  • Profile picture of the author york
    I personally really like Prestashop, and think it might be the best out there.
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  • Profile picture of the author rgb
    I think magento is a great platform for medium size business,
    by that I mean people who can afford to hire proper help,
    people with experience using it.

    It wont work great if you are starting out and trying to build it,
    yourself as a first ecommerce site you've ever build.

    If you are starting out try something like - americommerce,
    has a big learning curve but its easy to use/manage if you
    are just getting started.

    so I recommend:

    1. Americommerce - when you are starting out
    2. Magento - to build a business
    3. Custom - once you are 100% confident and have money to grow
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  • Profile picture of the author Croque
    So we shouldn't use the most robust, powerful and yes, flexible ecommerce platform out there just because you weren't able to use it?

    At least you should reword your tittle to "I was unable to have Magento do what I wanted"
    I thought you had discovered a security flaw or a Google bias or something actually worth reading.
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    • Profile picture of the author kjamesnv
      So we shouldn't use the most robust, powerful and yes, flexible ecommerce platform out there just because you weren't able to use it?
      Well Said!

      Magento is probably the most powerful, flexible and sophisticated ecommerce platform but its not for everyone.
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      • Profile picture of the author york
        Hi,

        For smaller businesses, Magento probably isn't worth the effort, that is, unless you are willing to spend in the thousands, and also in the thousands for ongoing support.

        Magento is mainly for stores that have revenues in the millions of dollars, and can afford it.

        Problems with Magento:

        The code is complicated and heavy, and requires lots of RAM and CPU for Magento even to load pages quickly enough so your customers don't leave, and if you have thousands of products, it will be too much for Magento to handle, unless you have your own dedicated servers and are load balancing with a separate server for MYSQL.

        You have to find Professional Magento developers to work on it because the code is so complex.
        It seems to break for no reason sometimes, especially when doing upgrades.
        It's product import function is extremely slow.


        Magento does have a very nice interface, and a lot of features, and you can create beautiful powerful stores with it, provided you have ~30k? to spend on it per year.


        Enter Prestashop. It is also a free open source shopping cart. Prestashop has a lot of great features, and the code is light and fast, you can run beautiful stores on it for hardly any money at all. Also, it has a multiple store option, so you can administrate many stores from the prestashop admin panel.

        Prestashop is nearly as nice as Magento, except you don't have to spend ~30k? a year to run it successfully, however there are problems with Prestashop, for instance, the multiple store feature has bugs, and several other things seem to have bugs, and it seems to take along time for the Prestashop team to fix them.

        Also, there are some paid solutions out there that might be nice too, maybe they would have less bugs than free open source shopping carts. But I would still say that if you want to run a free open source shopping cart, Prestashop is by far the best.


        Hope this helps!
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        • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
          Everyone makes valid points. The key is finding the proper solution for your store. What I have discovered about Magento, is you have two groups of people that love it. Those that run multiple stores (Hayneedles of the world) with full time staff and lots of budget and programmers/engineers. It is an extremely powerful solution that is overkill for 95% of the stores out there. But like others said, you need good hardware, I wouldn't even suggest VPS but dedicated servers, at the very least one but most likely you will need many.

          At the same time I have found OpenCart and Prestashop will do 99% of what Magento will do with less resources and a more involved community base. I need to look at the multistore option for Prestashop because its the one thing my current client was turned off of since we couldn't find documentation on it.

          I have another client who is on Zen Cart and loves it but, Zen Cart sites are very dated looking and work more on table layouts. They don't look as modern and I found OS Commerce to be about the same way.

          Most people starting out are better off on Hosted solutions unless you really need it do to specific things. Shopify is good in very specific circumstances but I really like the customer support and ease of use of BigCommerce. If you like BigCommerce and want to either run Multistore or subscription tpe businesses, then Americommerce is the first one to look at, and Volusion second. My only worry with Volusion is they have been having tons of down time over the last couple months.

          PCI-DSS compliance is a huge deal and most of the hosted carts are level 1 compliant. The last thing you want is to have to notify customers of a security breach and get sued for it. They also have shared SSL so that is one less worry you have to look at.

          Now I am gonna say something that will piss off all the developers and coders out there but I have to say it. If you do not have a ton of PHP and javascript knowledge, stay away from Magento. It is not designed for you.

          But that is not a bad thing. You don't need an 18 wheeler when your pick up truck (or pick up truck with a trailer) will do just fine and be able to turn faster and have the same if not more luxury. If you are the next hayneedle. build.com, walmart.com or large site, then yes, you need Magento and get ready to pay for it.

          BTW, I am gonna disagree with RGB, custom is never the way to go. Just about every "custom" site still sits on top of an opensource shopping cart program. From a PCI compliance, usability and flexibility, it doesn't make sense. Now, a programmer is gonna disagree since once your "custom" site is done you are stuck with the programmer that worked on it. If you know any programmers at PayPal, ask them which database they will never touch. They have one database over there that is so convoluted they are scared to touch it for fear of breaking the whole system. That is what you get with custom.

          Play around with Opencart and Prestashop (PHP Carts). I have also heard great things about Spree Commerce that is done in Ruby, same programming language as shopify.
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  • Profile picture of the author Palomino
    This is just a really, really misleading, and overall, stupid, post. I would normally take the time to dismember it piece by piece with proper links, facts, and rebuttals, but I'm watching Psyche reruns while waiting for the GF to get off work, and am frankly too tired to track down all the links and hard facts. I could post my own opinions and anecdotal evidence, but it seems that that's what got this ignorant thread started in the first place.

    Suffice it to say that setting up fresh Magento CE and Magento Go stores every. single. day. is my job, so I have a fair amount of experience working with the system. Yes, it is difficult to work with. Yes, it is n00b-unfriendly. Yes, if you don't read extension reviews and look at the compatibility charts that are provided on every extension page in the Magento Plugins database, then you can run into problems. Guess what? All complex data management systems do that- WordPress, my favorite site-building software, has numerous deprecated, discontinued, and under-supported plugins. Occasionally they do have problems and crash. The key to surviving this is to investigate what you're installing before doing so, and then perform a full backup.

    Anyways, off on a tangent. TL;DR: Magento is user-unfriendly to new users, but it is a damn-fine system that many, many, many small and medium sized businesses use every day to set up webstores easily. It can outperform pretty much every other shopping cart out there, and there are many, many reasons why it is the most popular shopping cart platform in the world.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sam England
      No use in crying over spilled milk!

      If it is free then there will eventually be some cost here and there...it's part of running a business folks...

      I have been using "Oscommerce" for years now and love it...was there some coding and conflicts between installing additional goodies? SURE THERE WAS...was it worth it? HELLZ YES!

      WHY?

      Because now a have a bad ass shopping cart and a system that works for me and my websites...and I can now clone one of my sites and have a new one up and running in a few hours...because all the hard work was done the first time...and I now have a fine tuned machine...

      So I say go with what works for you and make it work for YOU...or your clients...

      Make it happen folks...there is opportunity out there for all of us...

      Have a great day...

      Cheers,
      Sam
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  • Profile picture of the author iLiaison
    It's like an average joe getting his hands on a Lamborghini(someone made the comparison a few posts up). A good novelty but even if you got your hands on it for dirt cheap, there will always be issues. Magento is PHP intensive. Every little issue is a grand at least for proper fix/maintenance.
    A proper site w/ Magento would cost 7-10k to make alone using foreign coders.

    Congrats on the Lambo, enjoy the oil change.

    Wordpress or Joomla plugin stores are much better for small companies.

    Lorne
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    • Profile picture of the author kjamesnv
      Every little issue is a grand at least for proper fix/maintenance.
      A proper site w/ Magento would cost 7-10k to make alone using foreign coders.
      This entire thread is filled with nonsense and unsubstantiated claims.

      There are many good reasons why Magento is #1 platform for the past 2 years. See this link for evidence:
      October 2012 eCommerce Survey | Tom Robertshaw

      If a simple Wordpress Plugin fits your needs then by all means use that. It will be simple, quick and cheap but it will be very limited. For serious ecommerce stores that require a robust platform Magento is a great solution.
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      • Profile picture of the author york
        There are many good reasons why Magento is #1 platform for the past 2 years.
        That is what everyone "thinks".

        Don't believe the hype, it does look good, but it is meant to be complex, and break so you have to purchase support. Prestashop is probably better for us, for a lot of reasons already mentioned.

        For a time though, i have to admit, I was brainwashed by magento.

        Then I realized there is simply no reason for its code to be so complex and burdensome, accept for the fact that it is a huge ecommerce development framework, but yet it is not documented.

        Therefore, you have to pay for training, you have to get programmers to work on it, and it is not easy work, to change a small thing you have to change a large number of other files. And that means you are going to be spending a lot of money and time.

        But for the big players who have millions, they dont care how hard it is to program it, they just want it to work and look good, and they will spend a million on it without care.

        It is supposed to be complex and difficult to program, yet look beautiful and have all sorts of features, that is magento's business model, that is, get people to fall in love with it, but make it complex and hard to program, then you get to charge for support and development forever.

        Because, in function, the same thing could have been built without the complexity, but then how would varien make money off it? They wouldn't make nearly as much compared to purposely choosing a complex coding system, rather than a simple one.

        Why I No Longer Recommend Magento Community Edition To Small Businesses

        It is a well thought out, yet typical corporation scam type business plan in my opinion.
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        • Profile picture of the author kjamesnv
          Originally Posted by york View Post


          Don't believe the hype, it does look good, but it is meant to be complex, and break so you have to purchase support. .
          Again more nonsense.....

          Any complex software takes time to learn. It's amazing that some people don't want to invest the time to learn something and then claim "it sucks" or "its made to break".

          Just consider the source.
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          • Profile picture of the author york
            Again more nonsense.....
            Why isn't Magento's source code documented?

            Anyway if you want a Magento shop, figure on spending about 30k to get everything you want out of it, when you could of got Prestashop to do 98% the same thing for 1.5k.

            Thanks
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          • Profile picture of the author Kingfish85
            Originally Posted by kjamesnv View Post

            Again more nonsense.....

            Any complex software takes time to learn. It's amazing that some people don't want to invest the time to learn something and then claim "it sucks" or "its made to break".

            Just consider the source.
            It's the SAME reason everyone complains about Joomla or any other "real" CMS like DJango. It takes too much time to learn correctly since everybody & their brother has created some junk plugin for Wordpress to do the simplest of tasks.

            Magento powers some huge, big name companies that process millions of transactions daily & have hundreds of thousands of products. Magento is not the problem.

            See, with the applications, you have a fine line between a somewhat programmer that can half build something that works & a real programmer that costs thousands. Most of whom complain, are using the cheap route.

            As mentioned above, it also needs to be a combination of good development & a scalable & powerful enough environment to run on.
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Originally Posted by york View Post

          That is what everyone "thinks".

          Don't believe the hype, it does look good, but it is meant to be complex, and break so you have to purchase support. Prestashop is probably better for us, for a lot of reasons already mentioned.

          For a time though, i have to admit, I was brainwashed by magento.

          Then I realized there is simply no reason for its code to be so complex and burdensome, accept for the fact that it is a huge ecommerce development framework, but yet it is not documented.

          Therefore, you have to pay for training, you have to get programmers to work on it, and it is not easy work, to change a small thing you have to change a large number of other files. And that means you are going to be spending a lot of money and time.

          But for the big players who have millions, they dont care how hard it is to program it, they just want it to work and look good, and they will spend a million on it without care.

          It is supposed to be complex and difficult to program, yet look beautiful and have all sorts of features, that is magento's business model, that is, get people to fall in love with it, but make it complex and hard to program, then you get to charge for support and development forever.

          Because, in function, the same thing could have been built without the complexity, but then how would varien make money off it? They wouldn't make nearly as much compared to purposely choosing a complex coding system, rather than a simple one.
          Hi york,

          That is exactly what I thought the first time I tried modifying Magento. Like you I thought it needlessly complex and that it must have been done that way to encourage the purchase of the Enterprise edition. However, after finding the documentation, and reading it, I realized that they have a perfectly good reason for their relatively complex framework.

          The primary reason for the complex directory structure of the Magento framework is clearly laid out in the documentation. It is all about making the application robust. If certain files are damaged, or missing then the system falls back to a default framework, and if that fails it falls back to a base framework set of files.

          One of the benefits of the Magento framework is that a programmer that knows what he is doing can customize using a minimal set of custom files, This framework also allows for upgrades to be implemented with less chance of incompatibility with your customization, provided you follow the guidelines for the framework.

          The problem comes in when people try to hack in changes without following the guidelines for the framework. Those hacks are what causes people problem. It is important that you use a programmer that is very familiar with the Magento framework and not someone who is merely familiar with PHP.


          The bottom line is that you have got to learn and follow the Magento Framework to avoid unnecessary problems and issues. From my experience most people can't be bothered to do that and that is why they have issues with Magento.

          For anyone interested you will find user and developer guides for Magento here: Magento Users Guide | Magento

          Originally Posted by york View Post

          It is a well thought out, yet typical corporation scam type business plan in my opinion.
          I am not sure why you would call it a scam, as it is the business model used by nearly every "open source" eCommerce solution. Unless you are a programmer, there is nothing free in any open source eCommerce solution, they all make money from extensions and customization. In fact many of the non open source solutions end up being cheaper than any open source solution. This is the usual and customary business model for open source software.

          Business models for open-source software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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          • Profile picture of the author york
            The primary reason for the complex directory structure of the Magento framework is clearly laid out in the documentation. It is all about making the application robust. If certain files are damaged, or missing then the system falls back to a default framework, and if that fails it falls back to a base framework set of files.
            Hmmm, magento being a large advanced ecommerce framework, kind of gives it s a free pass for complexity, so the complexity goes without saying, except that it also provides a revenue incentive for varien. It seems they chose a more complex model than necessary for purposes of revenue, this is corroborated by the poor documentation, since one would think that for anything that complex, the documentation would be thorough, but it is not.

            Page caching is the only thing that speeds it up, that is if you pay thousands for the pro version.

            There should be warnings from varien about its extreme resource usage and the slow and poorly developed product import function, so that people aren't troubled by trying to use it, and subsequently meeting with immense frustration. Hiding these things from new users shows that it is definitely scammy.

            Magento is for companies that can afford 30k minimum per year in associated ongoing costs, for the platform, development, and upgrade costs, if they want a store with tens of thousands of products.

            A better alternative at the moment is Prestashop.
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            • Profile picture of the author kjamesnv
              Originally Posted by york View Post


              Page caching is the only thing that speeds it up, that is if you pay thousands for the pro version.
              .......
              Magento is for companies that can afford 30k minimum per year in associated ongoing costs, for the platform, development, and upgrade costs, if they want a store with tens of thousands of products.

              .
              Caching definitely helps Magento and there are ways to implement caching that are FREE. It is definitely not necessary to use Enterprise version. Varnish is one option.

              We run a successful Magento ecommerce site with 7500 products and don't spend anything close to $30K to maintain the site. We might spend $3k a year including hosting.

              It seems that this thread has a lot of misinformed opinions and speculation.
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              • Profile picture of the author york
                It seems that this thread has a lot of misinformed opinions and speculation.
                It maybe that magento has gotten slightly better since the last time I used it, which was over a year ago.

                But I still don't subscribe to the notion that it is a great solution. It is a framework basis which will require a very substantial investment, and headache.

                Put simply, it is not an easy solution.

                Thanks
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          • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
            Originally Posted by dburk View Post

            It is important that you use a programmer that is very familiar with the Magento framework and not someone who is merely familiar with PHP.
            This quote right here is why I don't think Magento is a good solution for many people, especially those starting out in ecommerce. No one will ever deny it is a robust solution that will allow you to do just about anything if you have the time and money available to make it work.

            But, for a good chunk of people, it is overkill and and there are better solutions. Again, I repeat what I always say, the majority of people that like Magento are developers and companies/people with large budgets.

            We run a successful Magento ecommerce site with 7500 products and don't spend anything close to $30K to maintain the site. We might spend $3k a year including hosting.
            $250 a month is a lot of budget for someone starting out in ecommerce. Lets assume $125 a month for a decent dedicated server and $10 a month for your SSL certificate this is quite a bit out of the box just for maintenance when the hosted solutions on your unlimited plans will cost you less than this, give you access to CDN's and do about 95% of what Magento will do. That is a lot of product to sell off the bat just to cover your maintenance costs...
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            • Profile picture of the author york
              $250 a month is a lot of budget for someone starting out in ecommerce. Lets assume $125 a month for a decent dedicated server and $10 a month for your SSL certificate this is quite a bit out of the box just for maintenance when the hosted solutions on your unlimited plans will cost you less than this, give you access to CDN's and do about 95% of what Magento will do. That is a lot of product to sell off the bat just to cover your maintenance costs...
              Very true, this is why we offer very advanced yet low cost drop ship management software, because we know that people starting out need the type of power it offers, but have to be able to afford it, and not have to pay more every month, like the other solutions out there. Ongoing costs like that continue to erode a bottom line.

              We have a very unique yet very powerful approach, but it does depend on the ability of the shopping cart's product import ability, and magento is high cost and yet just cannot adequately import products in any feasible way, it is kind of disappointing that a framework that is attractive to people who are willing to spend some money on it fails to provide a proper product import function, since this is actually an easy feature, it must be because they want people to pay them for custom development for it.

              Product data file import and export is extremely important for larger scale operations that wish to remain low cost operations.

              Shopping carts with a good product import function as of right now seem to be:


              oscmax //actually a really, really nice oscommerce based shopping cart.

              oscmax demo

              oscommerce

              maybe prestashop

              opencart product import function may still have some bugs, and you have to purchase it separately.
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  • Profile picture of the author Digibite
    As a rule I do not like to say bad things related to other peoples work.
    From research we did we found that Magento is a great system but it will probably fit a Med to large size site, and yes it will need help.
    From our research we also learned that it is a complex system, and that people do have great fears using it and updating it.

    At this stage we recommend to most our Small/Med customers to use opencart.
    Yes its not the best out there, but we find it fairly flexible and most of the extensions use VQmode, so little code editing is needed.

    I hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author jskarthik1
    I always thought about using Magneto. You made me re-consider my decision. Anyway, since I won't be posting 50k products in my store, i don't think it would be a problem for me. I already learned a little bit about working with magneto.

    Now, if I had to change to OS commerce, i will have to invest a considerable amount of time. I think magneto is good enough for my store of 2k pages(approx.)
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  • Profile picture of the author nonin
    so the problem is in extensions...

    well, in this case WordPress is the worst system in the world

    I think - Magento is the King!

    Possible 2 problems of yours:
    1) your web guys aren't good enough to work with magento;
    2) you want to have more custom functions than you can pay for (I'm not here to offend you).

    Good luck,
    Helmuts
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      I think - Magento is the King!
      No, Magento is not "the king", this is exactly the type of thinking that needs to be addressed, such a statement is too far in the other direction then the statement that magento sucks, to be honest magento is somewhere in between, and probably closer to the suck side.

      As already mentioned:

      It is resource intensive, you need dedicated servers.
      Its product import function sucks, you cant update your products on the fly with data files, it takes too long.
      It breaks during upgrades, and you have to pay varien or ebay or whoever owns it now, quite a bit of dollars compared to other carts to keep uptime.

      It is good if you dont care that product import for 7500 products will take more than 16hrs, and this is one troubling thing, why does it take so long? There is no reason for it except poor coding, and poor development models.

      http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...ts-of-products
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  • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
    Hmm...I myself have been wondering about this for my own site for quite a while. My wholesaler builds websites for their distributors, on the Magento platform. I have about 500 items or so. Is it worth using Magento or should I switch to something else?

    Your Best Source for Non-Lethal Self Defense Products | Stun & Run Self Defense LLC

    I'd like to have my site redesigned...but with all the fees of that, in addition to adding new things, is the cost even worth it? I know nothing about programming, and it's hard to find someone who knows PHP or the Magento platform at a reasonable cost...very expensive.

    Thoughts on this?
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      I'd like to have my site redesigned...but with all the fees of that, in addition to adding new things, is the cost even worth it? I know nothing about programming, and it's hard to find someone who knows PHP or the Magento platform at a reasonable cost...very expensive.
      I recommend switching to something else, I could set you up on a basic/default prestashop or opencart, and get your product data feeds in order.

      If you look at odesk.com and search for a contractor for prestashop or opencart, there are some that charge 5-10/hr.

      Hope this helps!
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      • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
        Originally Posted by york View Post

        I recommend switching to something else, I could set you up on a basic/default prestashop, and get your product data feeds in order.

        If you look at odesk.com and search for a contractor for prestashop, there are some that charge 5/hr.

        Hope this helps!
        I've read that Prestashop is good, but haven't looked into it yet. What do you think about Shopify or Big Commerce? How would you compare Prestashop to these?

        Oh, and what do you think a good price for a redesign is for my current site if I were to switch over to another platform? There was a group on here offering me a $1300 quote, staying on Magento. I heard that wasn't too good of a deal though...

        Appreciate the recommendation!
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        • Profile picture of the author york
          I've read that Prestashop is good, but haven't looked into it yet. What do you think about Shopify or Big Commerce? How would you compare Prestashop to these?
          I dont know much about paid solutions, I like owning the solution, and not having to pay monthly fees, and for the open source carts you can get an account at bluehost.com and use simple scripts, free with a bluehost account, to do a one-click install of several open source solutions, including opencart, prestashop, and several others, you can test them, and delete them and get a different one if you decide.

          I prefer carts that load pages very quickly, because if the site is just the slightest bit slow you just lost a sale.

          You could research to find out what carts load pages the fastest, and you always want to make sure the cart has a solid product import function.

          It seems there is a product import module for opencart that costs 135.

          If you are dropshipping you will need your supplier to have product data feeds that reflect the inventory levels they have on a daily basis, so that you never end up selling a product that is out of stock or where the supplier changed the price. Drop Ship Manager will keep your product data feeds automatically updated with these changes, then you just import that product data feed into your shopping cart software.

          Opencart also has a multiple stores feature, where all the stores are controlled by one admin panel, and the total import pro seems to be able to import to multiple stores, and you can use Drop Ship Manager to keep your product data up to date for each multi store, as many multiple stores as you want actually.

          Prestashop also has multiple stores, but not sure if that feature is working perfectly as of version 1.5.3.

          You want multiple stores so that you can have as many drop ship suppliers as you want, each in a different store. That way your aren't stuck with just one supplier and you can make much more money.

          Hope this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author Genesis1
    Magento seriously weak. try to go with Joomla + shopping carts
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  • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
    I don't know anything about Opencart. I've heard a lot of things about Joomla, but I'm pretty clueless about it.

    Still no thoughts about Big Commerce or Shopify? :/
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      I don't know anything about Opencart. I've heard a lot of things about Joomla, but I'm pretty clueless about it.
      I dont know that much about paid solutions but whatever shopping cart software you use make sure:

      1. It has very fast page load times.
      2. It has a good product import function.

      Most carts have everything needed for ecommerce, but the above are the areas that some carts, like magento are lacking, and other carts excel in, making them the best carts for ecommerce.

      Americommerce //has multiple stores, the best feature of all.

      Hope this helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
      Originally Posted by srselfdefense View Post

      I don't know anything about Opencart. I've heard a lot of things about Joomla, but I'm pretty clueless about it.

      Still no thoughts about Big Commerce or Shopify? :/
      For people starting out I think both BigCommerce and Shopify are great platforms. The less technically advanced you are, the better these platforms work for you. Which platform to use? It all depends on functionality needed and product mix. If you are going to have lots of categories and sub-categories. Big Commerce works fantastic. Not as easy to change the included templates as Shopify but functionality out of the box is amazing.

      If you have a niche store with few product categories and no sub-categories, I love the look and feel of Shopify but it does not handle sub categories without a bit of Java Script and CSS. It is a simpler system than BigCommerce that you have to rent plugins to make it do what BigCommerce does and you have to be at the 59 level to get discounts but it can work well.

      I know a lot of people like Joomla, and it has its place in e-commerce but it is just not as powerful as a dedicated ecommerce shopping cart. I have one customer that uses it but he only has 3 products he manufacturers and doesn't necessarily feel he needs a full shopping cart.

      As for costs, if you are starting out small, the hosted carts will be at parity between the do it yourself. For example if you have less than 100 products at first, BigCommerce is $24.95 and includes a shared SSL and is PCI Compliant. If you go open source, you are paying, lets say aggressively (keeping costs down) $6/month for shared hosting and $6/month for a small SSL certificate.

      You are also going to have to do it all yourself including cart updates, installing modules and plugins, templates and any trouble shooting you are on your own. For many folks on there, that won't be an issue but if I can save several hours a week for $12, its worth it to me.

      If you are interested in Walk throughs of Shopify, BigCommerce and 3dCart I have them at the below youtube links. Might help you make a decision.

      Shopify Walk Through
      BigCommerce Walk Through
      3DCart


      3DCart has its place in certain circumstances but its not as powerful as the other two. I haven't had a chance to do reviews of the other carts yet.
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  • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
    Thanks for the advice? I think Big Commerce is more suited for me, especially since it allows for lots of categories and subcategories (something I need and do not currently have on my website). For Big Commerce, is it relatively cost-effective to have someone design a website for you and maintain it for you, at least compared to Magento?

    One thing I currently like about my Magento site is the fact that I can have unlimited products and memory...and I pay $30 for all of it. I currently have 507 products on the site...which means that I would either have to cut down my products and pay $39.95 or pay $79.95 (I would opt for the former). I don't like being restricted in how many SKUs I can list...

    Other than that, I think Big Commerce would be the best bet. The only thing is that I would lose out on the money I already invested in my current site...basically going back to the drawing board and dishing out more money to have a newly redesigned website. But that's the cost of doing business, as they say.

    The other thing too is that the shopping cart for my site is customized to provide the exact shipping cost for an item based on its weight and the service used (e.g. UPS). How much would it cost to have that implemented on a new site?

    Would it possibly be easier to just have my current site redesigned or start all the way over with Big Commerce? It's a tough decision...if I chose the latter I would have to wait until got more capital (which is hopefully soon).

    Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      The other thing too is that the shopping cart for my site is customized to provide the exact shipping cost for an item based on its weight and the service used (e.g. UPS). How much would it cost to have that implemented on a new site?
      The shipping module would likely built into bigcommerce.

      Like you said you have to pay bigcommerce more if you want to offer more products, and 80.00 a month is kind of a lot.

      Magento is slow when it has many products, and low quality product import function.

      I would personally recommend OpenCart.

      It is free, you can set it up and try it out at bluehost.com for 48.00/year.

      You could do the same thing with Prestashop.

      You should experiment around and test these things out., it takes time to figure out exactly what you want, but it is better to do the research and not just have faith in a platform without testing other options.

      Stay away from spending 80/month just on the platform, you will still have to pay for work on it for the theme and you would still be limited in skus.

      Keep you site up for now, but get another test site going, like Prestashop or Opencart.

      Anyway what if you get interested in another line of products? You might want a multistore feature:

      Opencart
      Prestashop
      Americommerce

      Hope this helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by srselfdefense View Post

      Thanks for the advice? I think Big Commerce is more suited for me, especially since it allows for lots of categories and subcategories (something I need and do not currently have on my website). For Big Commerce, is it relatively cost-effective to have someone design a website for you and maintain it for you, at least compared to Magento?

      One thing I currently like about my Magento site is the fact that I can have unlimited products and memory...and I pay $30 for all of it. I currently have 507 products on the site...which means that I would either have to cut down my products and pay $39.95 or pay $79.95 (I would opt for the former). I don't like being restricted in how many SKUs I can list...

      Other than that, I think Big Commerce would be the best bet. The only thing is that I would lose out on the money I already invested in my current site...basically going back to the drawing board and dishing out more money to have a newly redesigned website. But that's the cost of doing business, as they say.

      The other thing too is that the shopping cart for my site is customized to provide the exact shipping cost for an item based on its weight and the service used (e.g. UPS). How much would it cost to have that implemented on a new site?

      Would it possibly be easier to just have my current site redesigned or start all the way over with Big Commerce? It's a tough decision...if I chose the latter I would have to wait until got more capital (which is hopefully soon).

      Thanks!
      Hi srselfdefense,

      Since you already have a Magento cart custom configured you may want to stick with that for now, just update the theme design and perhaps move to a hosting company that specializes in Magento optimized hosting. You could try Magemojo.com, or Nexcess.net, my Magento carts run lightening fast on those hosts.

      If you are looking for convenience, you may want to check out eCommHub.com, they can automate your store's inventory management, and order fulfillment and, like many other ecommerce solutions, they seamlessly integrate with your Magento shop.
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      • Profile picture of the author york
        Since you already have a Magento cart custom configured you may want to stick with that for now, just update the theme design and perhaps move to a hosting company that specializes in Magento optimized hosting. You could try Magemojo.com, or Nexcess.net, my Magento carts run lightening fast on those hosts.

        If you are looking for convenience, you may want to check out eCommHub.com, they can automate your store's inventory management, and order fulfillment and, like many other ecommerce solutions, they seamlessly integrate with your Magento shop.
        Between the 60/mo hosting, the ecommhub 70/mo (for 300 orders), and other associated costs for magento development, you would be laying out a substantial amount of money every month.

        You might want to go with a free solution, low cost outsourcing, and low cost drop ship management software.
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Originally Posted by york View Post

          Between the 60/mo hosting, the ecommhub 70/mo (for 300 orders), and other associated costs for magento development, you would be laying out a substantial amount of money every month.

          You might want to go with a free solution, low cost outsourcing, and low cost drop ship management software.

          Hi york,

          That's one way to go if it suits you. :rolleyes:

          I know people that say "why pay for an expensive car, when walking is free?" Or "why pay all that money for a home, when camping is free?". "Why pay for groceries when you can find all you need to eat in the dumpster?" :confused:

          I guess if your goal is to live off the land like a savage, then free living is the way to go. However some of us may want to build a real business, and you don't see too many fast growing businesses that try to manage on the absolute cheapest way to go.

          Some people focus on making money, rather than on never spending much. I'm in that camp that is happy to spend a million dollars if it is the surest way to make 2 million in profit.

          Different strokes for different folks.

          No reason we cannot both contribute to this thread.

          I will let you speak for the people that are focused on spending little and investing next to nothing on their business, your advice seems to fit that approach and I sure it will appeal to many on this forum.

          I will try to contribute a little to the crowd that wants to grow business fast and to invest in the best tools to maximize profit. This way both camps will be served by our different approaches. Each Warrior can decide which approach is better for their own personal agenda.
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        • Profile picture of the author rapidracing911
          Very interesting -

          forgotten that ebay is powered by Magento and Yahoo! is a partner. It seems like you had the free edition for having under 50K SKU over there and l already know why you're site when slow and because of the load timing which means you need to start combing the lines =D

          I have my own company with 15+ developers in Magento platform and all my customers have not had an issue and even paid for such ext. as you did (lol). Need help combing you're lines or a new platform; inbox me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Drew Trainor
    I would personally just use shoppify... save a lot of headaches.
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      I would personally just use shoppify... save a lot of headaches.
      This is a good idea, shopify is 59/month and you can have 2500 prods.
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      • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
        Except Shopify is not good when you have a lot of products and sub products. Shopify is not designed around multiple categories and sub categories. They tell you this themselves so based on what he said, I wouldn't go with Shopify.

        So remember unlike Shopify, BigCommerce is 100 products, not 100 SKU's. For example, if you have a tshirt in 3 different sizes and 3 different colors, that will be 6 SKU's. But, you create that as a single product in BigCommerce, with 6 options (SKU's). So in this case here (t-shirts) you can have 600 separate SKU's for 24.95 a month.

        As for UPS, yes BigCommerce has the ability to set up exact shipping costs for you as well as surcharges. You can either do a generic UPS feed or if you have an account with discounts, it will allow you to add your account and pull those numbers. You can do the same with Fed Ex, USPS, Canada Post, etc.

        Frankly (BigCommerce), they have about 30 different templates for you to use and if you customize it, you can make it your own. They tell you in the support how to make changes to the CSS if you want so its not an issue to build one out and eventually customize it.

        PM me if you want additional information.
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        • Profile picture of the author york
          They tell you this themselves so based on what he said, I wouldn't go with Shopify.
          Hmmm, personally I would hang with free solutions but that is just me, Prestashop and OpenCart, these carts will likely need small configuration changes and some cut and paste in the code, though I dont mind configuring and doing these small changes.

          But if you must have convenience, then you will obviously need a paid solution.

          I would recommend Americommerce since it has multiple stores, and so you can run a lot of different suppliers through it at once, all with a different store front, and you will definitely want this in the future when you want to grow further.

          I mean the platinum package of Americommerce is 300/mo for unlimited products across multi-stores seems like a good deal because just think of all the business you can do with that.

          Of course, you will want to run Drop Ship Manager to synchronize to your dropshippers inventory levels across all your store fronts.

          Hope this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
    Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I think that I've narrowed my choices down to Open Cart and BigCommerce. I really love BigCommerce because it is:

    • SEO-friendly
    • Able to integrate with eBay (I am thinking of opening an ebay shop)
    • Able to sell on Facebook (interesting!)
    • Coupon codes
    • Built-in analytics
    • Google Shopping Feed
    • Categories/Subcategories
    • Easily to configure payment solutions
    • And much more...
    Opencart is nice in the sense that it is, from what I've read, "lightweight" and easy to host. What I'm worried about is having to maintain everything myself...I am looking for a solution where I can get the help when I need it, as I have no programming experience and a limited budget (currently).



    As for BigCommerce, I wouldn't mind sticking with the Silver plan and knocking some of my products out (I'm just barely over 500). All-in-all I think that this would be a great change from Magento. Anyone know of any great, relatively cost-effective (not "cheap," but with good deals!) web designers that could maybe help me with this?



    For everyone that mentioned dropshipping software, I currently only have one supplier so that isn't necessary. Same goes for multi-store functionality...not necessary at the moment.
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      For everyone that mentioned dropshipping software, I currently only have one supplier so that isn't necessary. Same goes for multi-store functionality...not necessary at the moment.
      A problem is that your supplier's inventory levels will change, and a product might be sold out at the drop shipper, and unless you update your store with that change, you will have to refund customers if they check out with products that aren't actually available at the drop shipper.

      Hope this helps!
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      • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
        I don't have access to data feeds through my CMS. I have to check regularly on the wholesaler's website and change things manually, which is a real pain. I'll have to see if I can get those data feeds though...if it's a possibility.
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        • Profile picture of the author york
          I don't have access to data feeds through my CMS. I have to check regularly on the wholesaler's website and change things manually, which is a real pain. I'll have to see if I can get those data feeds though...if it's a possibility.
          A word of advice, get the feeds if you can, if not, switch dropshippers, here is a list of drop shippers that have feeds.

          You might try:

          SAFTEY TECHNOLOGY SECURITY PRODUCTS

          DROP SHIPPERS WITH PRODUCT FEEDS LIST
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  • My experience with Magento was good. As many comments have already mentioned, and I can testify, it's according to everyone's needs.

    I played with Prestashop, Magento and WooCommerce. Each one is suitable for a specific need. When I was working on a certain project the best thing for me was Magento, I also have to admit that some extensions there are totally useless, many are there to be sold, if you don't have enough knowledge, you should hire someone to help you otherwise you surely will fall in troubles.


    I could manage Magento to run on a non-recommended server, easily and fast, but you need to know what you are doing, if you don't know, then, hire someone to it.


    So, to say that Magento is useless, I can't say that. It's very powerful, suitable for many projects. But after some experiences, I can say that depending on what I will need, and how ambitious my project will be, I can opt to develop my own ecommerce shop to use Magento


    I recently launched an online shop and WooComerce is going pretty well for me, once it is not that big. A light and fast shop is vital to rank fast on Google, something that when I was playing with Magento was not that easy. This was pretty much one of the reasons that convinced me to play with WooComerce for now.
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  • Profile picture of the author classiqa
    Magento is open source, this saves your money. Use that money to customize with a professional developer and you will happy with your store.
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    Business Development
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      I will let you speak for the people that are focused on spending little and investing next to nothing on their business, your advice seems to fit that approach and I sure it will appeal to many on this forum.
      The only way to be successful it is start out with almost zero cost, or the lowest cost possible, that way you have all the time in the world to grow. The opposite is laying out all sorts of money every month for services that are not actually needed, when lower cost options are available, and then paying those monthy fees while your business has no income, that means losing money.

      You want no monthly fees, or as little a s possible, and then you have all the time in the world to build up momentum.

      But also, you have to factor in your own time too, if a certain solution is low cost, but will take too much time, then you might want to pay out for convenience, there is always a good balance to be found between low cost and convenience, every entrepreneur should find that balance.

      I personally like low cost outsourcing, sites like: odesk, elance, freelancer, etc have a lot of workers with the skills to help you set up your business, they can do custom coding, and look and feel on your webstores, at a low cost.

      Shopping carts that are easy to work on have the lowest cost in terms of outsourcing too, Magento is the hardest to work on.

      Also, for outsourced work you need a cart that is open source so the worker can customize the code, and this not possible with paid solutions, because the code is not available.

      That is one of the biggest reasons free carts are better.

      Hope this helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author RonnieJSmith
      Originally Posted by classiqa View Post

      Magento is open source, this saves your money. Use that money to customize with a professional developer and you will happy with your store.
      +1 but my recoomendation would be buying a professional theme and hiring a devloper to attach feed parser to your site with a scheduled checker which can check for dead items and update accordingly.
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  • Profile picture of the author kcgaul
    I've always thought Magento was the ultimate, have complete control over your site, platform. But with a steep learning curve for me. Because of that and because I'm in Canada and needed something to working with Canadian merchant accounts, I went with Volusion. Perfect for someone who has no idea what they are doing, unfortunately I have some idea as to what I'm doing and I want to shoot myself on a daily basis when trying to customize anything. Any time I ask their tech support people anything I end of up explaining to them how their system works.

    I hope to have the time to learn Magento soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
    Hi York,

    Safety Technology is actually my supplier. They built my current website for me (though I had the design tweaked a bit). I'll have to ask about the data feeds...though I'm hoping to switch over to a more cost-effective solution like BigCommerce or OpenCart. I'm not sure why they would use the Magento platform over everything else for small business owners with little to no capital. It makes no sense, really.

    Originally Posted by classiqa View Post

    Magento is open source, this saves your money. Use that money to customize with a professional developer and you will happy with your store.
    As York stated throughout the thread, costs can range in the thousands...my business account has about $900 in total right now. There's no way I can afford professional development, especially since I'm not even making sales. Not only that, I myself have no coding experience...which makes simple changes on my own that much more difficult. Another ecommerce platform may be a better solution, especially in the long-run (Magento is just too complicated, which adds to the costs).
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      As York stated throughout the thread, costs can range in the thousands...my business account has about $900 in total right now. There's no way I can afford professional development, especially since I'm not even making sales. Not only that, I myself have no coding experience...which makes simple changes on my own that much more difficult. Another ecommerce platform may be a better solution, especially in the long-run (Magento is just too complicated, which adds to the costs).
      I like the idea of using open source carts the best, because the code is freely available, and that allows you to get easy low cost outsourcing through odesk, freelancer, elance, and other outsourcing websites, where you can hire coders to do just about anything you want to customize your shopping cart, but paid carts dont allow this because the code is not available to you, and any customizations would require you paying them to do them, obviously at a higher cost than outsourcing it. Magento lets you access the code, but it is so complex and hard to work on, it is hard to find coders, and you end up paying top dollar for small customizations compared to carts that have more simple code, like opencart, prestashop, or oscmax.

      Hope this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author srselfdefense
    I'm still wondering...how would you compare OpenCart to BigCommerce? Do you think BigCommerce is even worth it?

    Thanks for the advice!
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    • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
      Originally Posted by srselfdefense View Post

      I'm still wondering...how would you compare OpenCart to BigCommerce? Do you think BigCommerce is even worth it?

      Thanks for the advice!
      I am a big fan of BigCommerce and think it is quite a bit simpler then OpenCart. I have used both and each has its needs. Frankly, what I like about BigCommerce, I don't have to worry about servers, SSL, certificates and upgrades. It is all handled for you. On top of that, lots of third party developers are creating apps to work with it. It is not as promoted as much as Shopify does but they are doing it.
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      I'm still wondering...how would you compare OpenCart to BigCommerce? Do you think BigCommerce is even worth it?
      BigCommerce source code isnt available to users, so any integration needs to be done by BigCommerce.

      I would go with a free cart, there is just more room to grow, and customize with a free cart, like prestashop and opencart, outsourcing is easy, also, it is better to start on a solid platform so that your learning is well invested, you dont want to go with a non-superior cart, and end up investing time into it, when you could have been making good time with a superior cart.

      BigCommerce is not exactly superior, in a few ways, one you have to pay them every month, and two, you dont even get to customize the code, you have to pay them to do it, also, they can raise prices whenever they feel like it, so you would not be in full control, and also, Prestashop is just as good as BigCommerce, they both have the same features for the most part.

      With a free cart there is more on your shoulders, and you will have to learn things about how to use the cart, and use the community forums to troubleshoot things, and outsourcing can help you too, but it is better than paying money out every month and depending on some other entity that can shut your whole store down if they want to, when there are equal free open source quality alternatives available.

      http://www.prestashop.com/forums/top...s-bigcommerce/

      Hope this helps!
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      • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
        The biggest problem with ALL open cart solutions is that they are not PCI compliant once an outside hosting company is introduced to the equation. They also have to be continually updated with patches due to security vulnerabilities. Unless you are only using PayPal to process payments (which means you are likely only getting 1/2 to 1/3 of the sales you should be getting), you will end up paying more in monthly non-compliance fees than what BigCommerce costs.

        A $24.95/month plan with BC includes the hosting so you really are only paying about $15/month extra for the shopping cart. If people can't afford to pay that meager amount of money for their business, why are they building a website in the first place?

        No matter what shopping cart you use, if you want to do customizations, you are going to have to know how to code or hire someone. People spend way too much time tweaking totally insignificant things on their website and far too little time marketing it. There are plenty of fairly ugly websites out there making lots of money! Pick a template, create unique pages throughout the website and give people a reason to buy from you and they will. Tweak the look later, after you are making money. Few people don't buy because they don't like your colors!
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        • Profile picture of the author york
          The biggest problem with ALL open cart solutions is that they are not PCI compliant once an outside hosting company is introduced to the equation.
          This is complete mis-information and propaganda from corporations like big commerce to try to scare people into using their monthly payment carts, this is a typical tactic of corporations lobbying to try to stop better lower costs choices, as usual.

          From the Prestashop website:

          "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DDS) compliance is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. They are designed to ensure that an e-commerce solution has been designed to safely accept and store credit card information. PrestaShop is PCI compliant Ready and up to all standards and regulations."

          PCI compliance is only concerned with the payment modules, that they are secure, ie. the payment module must use ssl, and credit card numbers must not be stored on the site. Also, the payment module must follow safe coding guidelines, and yes all open source carts of high caliber like prestashop and opencart are PCI compliant.

          Tell me, why would a company go through all the trouble of building an ecommerce platform, if no one would use it because it can't be PCI compliant?

          Hope this helps!
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          • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
            Originally Posted by york View Post

            This is complete mis-information and propaganda from corporations like big commerce to try to scare people into using their monthly payment carts, this is a typical tactic of corporations lobbying to try to stop better lower costs choices, as usual.

            From the Prestashop website:

            "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DDS) compliance is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. They are designed to ensure that an e-commerce solution has been designed to safely accept and store credit card information. PrestaShop is PCI compliant Ready and up to all standards and regulations."

            PCI compliance is only concerned with the payment modules, that they are secure, ie. the payment module must use ssl, and credit card numbers must not be stored on the site. Also, the payment module must follow safe coding guidelines, and yes all open source carts of high caliber like prestashop and opencart are PCI compliant.

            Tell me, why would a company go through all the trouble of building an ecommerce platform, if no one would use it because it can't be PCI compliant?

            Hope this helps!
            Well, people can choose to believe Prestashop - an entity just as likely to be lulling people into a false sense of security as the corporations are trying to "scare" people - if they want.

            There are other parties involved in the transaction besides just the customer and the website. There is the hosting company. The hosting company may be PCI compliant and the shopping cart may be PCI compliant but communication between the two, that were not specifically designed to work with each other is another story. Virtually every month one or the other parties tweaks something for security reasons that causes a security problem with the other.

            If you have a payment processor that requires monthly PCI Compliance scans be done by an outside agency such as Trustwave, I can almost guarantee you that you will be forever chasing your tail. What was a clean scan last month will show 100s of vulnerabilities the next. The hosting company inevitably has to tweak their code because of some new patch made by the software company. When that issue is finally resolved, another patch a month or so later starts the process all over again.

            Self hosted solutions must be certified as PCI compliant, which costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars PER YEAR. There is a difference between "PCI Compliant Ready" (The actual words used by Prestashop) and actual PCI Compliance Certification, I assure you. We looked into this whole issue for our own hosted platform in the past. If you talk to people like Ed Sturrock, the founder of Americommerce, he'll tell you what it takes in time, money and manpower to stay fully PCI compliant and certified as such.

            In the end, as stated above numerous times by many, this isn't about the money. This is about finding the best solution that will do what you want it do do now and in the future. As Malia pointed out, what you might save the first few months could turn into a major headache down the road when you realize that what you are working with simply does not cut the mustard. If you have to go 6 months, paying $25 per month before your first order and you can't afford that, it's a shame. Every brick and mortar startup would be rolling in the aisle with laughter if they heard that.
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            • Profile picture of the author york
              The hosting company may be PCI compliant and the shopping cart may be PCI compliant but communication between the two, that were not specifically designed to work with each other is another story.
              Bluehost.com and simple scripts would'nt even offer one click installation of prestashop and opencart, if this were the case because it is not ethical, and it would also be a liability to them to offer things that dont install as PCI compliant.

              Further, PCI compliance is for entities that STORE cardholder information, like payment processors themselves.

              Any certified payment processor module, recognized by authorized payment processors, such as google checkout or paypal, that does NOT store the cardholders information on the merchants system is AUTOMATICALLY pci compliant, and long as https is used for the communication between the shopping cart and the payment processor.

              Self hosted solutions must be certified as PCI compliant, which costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars PER YEAR. There is a difference between "PCI Compliant Ready" (The actual words used by Prestashop) and actual PCI Compliance Certification, I assure you.
              This is nonsense. The writer here is intentionally trying to create a fear of opensource shopping carts, to get people to pay for paid carts. The key term here "self-hosted", which does not apply to this conversation, and therefore being used here is nonsensical, but maybe if the writer were a little more clarified, it seems to mean storing credit card numbers on a non standard web server with a non standard shopping cart.

              Prestashop and Opencart are the standard, and are fully PCI compliant when you use a standard payment processor. And no, you don't have to pay thousands to prove these carts are pci compliant, this has already been proved by Prestashop, as already stated. As long as Prestashop is used on a standard OS like linux, and uses https to communicate to the payment processor using a standard payment processor module, like google checkout or paypal, it is pci compliant, and there is no amount of fabrication that can change this fact.

              I personally would go with open source solutions like Prestashop and Opencart, since you can have the code, and customize it, but with paid solutions you cannot do this, only they can customize it, and you have to pay them.

              Outsourcing to get work done on open source carts is easy, and low cost, and for many it is a better choice than laying out money on monthly fees to paid solutions, which can shut your store down, though for some the convenience of a paid solution is nice.


              Thanks
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              • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
                Originally Posted by york View Post

                Bluehost.com and simple scripts would'nt even offer one click installation of prestashop and opencart, if this were the case because it is not ethical, and it would also be a liability to them to offer things that dont install as PCI compliant.

                Further, PCI compliance is for entities that STORE cardholder information, like payment processors themselves.

                Any certified payment processor module, recognized by authorized payment processors, such as google checkout or paypal, that does NOT store the cardholders information on the merchants system is AUTOMATICALLY pci compliant, and long as https is used for the communication between the shopping cart and the payment processor.



                This is nonsense. The writer here is intentionally trying to create a fear of opensource shopping carts, to get people to pay for paid carts. The key term here "self-hosted", which does not apply to this conversation, and therefore being used here is nonsensical, but maybe if the writer were a little more clarified, it seems to mean storing credit card numbers on a non standard web server with a non standard shopping cart.

                Prestashop and Opencart are the standard, and are fully PCI compliant when you use a standard payment processor. And no, you don't have to pay thousands to prove these carts are pci compliant, this has already been proved by Prestashop, as already stated. As long as Prestashop is used on a standard OS like linux, and uses https to communicate to the payment processor using a standard payment processor module, like google checkout or paypal, it is pci compliant, and there is no amount of fabrication that can change this fact.

                I personally would go with open source solutions like Prestashop and Opencart, since you can have the code, and customize it, but with paid solutions you cannot do this, only they can customize it, and you have to pay them.

                Outsourcing to get work done on open source carts is easy, and low cost, and for many it is a better choice than laying out money on monthly fees to paid solutions, which can shut your store down, though for some the convenience of a paid solution is nice.


                Thanks
                I am sorry to tell you, you are wrong in this case about PCI compliance. Completely and utterly wrong. We (on the board) know you are concerned about selling your software (and it probably integrates easier with the open source carts) but please do not provide false facts.

                PCI Compliance is a huge deal and its not just about using a PCI compliant cart. It means more then just having an SSL certificate. It even comes down to how often you change your passwords and how strong they are. What about how secure your hosting environment is? It includes security scans on your servers from time to time.

                Getting PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant is a huge undertaking. As for Bluehost or Hostgator, as much as I like them, do you really think they care if you are PCI Compliant? At $15 a month as long as you aren't taking up to much server capacity or abusing the TOS, they don't care. They can't. Look at their terms, this is up to you. And frankly, if there is a Data Breach, Blue Host won't care. And HostGator took Prestashop off their hosting for a while due to security issues.

                A Big Commerce starter plan at 24.95 a month, compare that with lets say conservative 9.99 a month hosting, and figure 7 dollars a month for the cheapest SSL certificate. I would pay $5 a month extra to not have to deal with any of the junk and I do. You also get access to CDN's to make your sites super fast. The only reason I do self host, is one of my customers runs his own little data center and allows me to run some stores there. He has a full time staff running his servers so I am less concerned then I normally would be.

                Like Dave said above, people spend to much time trying to customize their sites instead of just marketing. One customer of mine has a site, it is the ugliest site I have ever seen and yet he does 50K a month in sales on average, in a competitive market and is no where SEO optimized. Just get the your site up and running with as little troubles as possible and just market. Whether its open source, closd source, hosted or self hosted, just get it up and running.
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              • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
                Originally Posted by york View Post


                Further, PCI compliance is for entities that STORE cardholder information, like payment processors themselves.

                Any certified payment processor module, recognized by authorized payment processors, such as google checkout or paypal, that does NOT store the cardholders information on the merchants system is AUTOMATICALLY pci compliant, and long as https is used for the communication between the shopping cart and the payment processor.

                And no, you don't have to pay thousands to prove these carts are pci compliant, this has already been proved by Prestashop, as already stated. As long as Prestashop is used on a standard OS like linux, and uses https to communicate to the payment processor using a standard payment processor module, like google checkout or paypal, it is pci compliant, and there is no amount of fabrication that can change this fact.
                Unfortunately, we used to believe the same things about PCI compliance not being applicable if your website does not store credit card data and that is simply not the case. Additionally, HTPPS is a component of compliance but does not automatically make a website PCI compliant.

                As a company that had its own shopping cart that was PCI compliant, we certainly know the difference between a PCI compliant shopping cart and a PCI compliant website. The PCI compliance issue comes in when that data is transmitted from the shopping cart through an outside server. If you have a website where a form is being filled out with credit card information, and the information is being sent from your domain to the processing company through an outside server, it theoretically CAN be intercepted.

                Your examples of Google Checkout and PayPal have nothing to do with this issue. They are not on-site payment methods, so customers are not entering payment information on your website via a web form. If you don't mind having a far lower conversion rate, you can most certainly use those methods of payment for your website and not have to worry about PCI compliance at all.

                It's silly to get into a back and forth on this because unless you have actually designed a PCI compliant shopping cart and been in the situation of trying to host a PCI certified solution as we have, you can only provide what you think you know and not what you have learned from actually trying to do it and the enormous costs involved. Folks can find out for themselves somewhere down the road but might want to read this relatively simple explanation of PCI compliance - What you need to know about PCI Compliance.
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                • Profile picture of the author york
                  It's silly to get into a back and forth on this because unless you have actually designed a PCI compliant shopping cart
                  I have said it before to the other poster, and that is this:

                  You have the right to believe or think whatever you like, but what you think about this is not real.

                  Yes, Prestashop or OpenCart on Bluehost, via authorize.net, google checkout, or paypal are all PCI compliant, and you cannot change this fact.

                  That is just how it is, now accept this fact and get over it, I am absolutely done wasting time on this. Hope you can understand that.

                  Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author malia
    I have used so many different ecommerce programs, over the years (many, many years) that I have done just about everything.

    If you are just starting out, it is easier and less headache to use a hosted solution than to take on a self-hosted solution and end up having to become a bit of a webmaster.

    I think that people are well-intentioned with telling you to go with a free solution, the problem is there are a lot of merchants operating open source software, who do not update security patches, and have insecure websites, precisely because they are not webmasters and taking on that technical knowledge may be off their radar.

    I run self-hosted ecommerce, however I would not recommend it for everyone, or most in fact. Yes the others charge a monthly fee, but quite frankly I can't run my stores on cheap hosting plans anyway so by the time I add up all the related server costs, I am paying about the same as I would pay with something that charges a monthly fee anyway- even with having multiple stores.

    The only real advantage to self hosting and open source is that if you are not sure about the viability of the store, and want to do it with minimal cost, you can. Because honestly, you can pay for something like big commerce or shopify and be paying for months before you get your first store up and running.

    Having said all of that, when you make this decision, do not make it about money RIGHT NOW. When I purchased my software years ago, Big Commerce was Interspire shopping and you could purchase that outright and I don't think shopify was around, Magento definitely wasn't. It was like you could get a Yahoo store or a few other options like Monster Commerce, Americart, and many others that have lost their edge. Thus, I didn't have these choices. If I were starting all over today, knowing what I know about the maintenance, I don't think I would make the same decision.

    Especially considering the flexibility these options have with their apps, plug ins and add ons. I was seriously duct-taping a system together that now you can have rolled in to one thing.

    Don't let the price be your deciding factor. Either way you are going to pay for that store if you expect it to make money. So going with something "free" just for now can end up being difficult to course-correct down the road.
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    • Profile picture of the author york
      Don't let the price be your deciding factor. Either way you are going to pay for that store if you expect it to make money. So going with something "free" just for now can end up being difficult to course-correct down the road.
      You really have to look at your life, if you go with a free solution, believe me you will be spending time on it, if you are into tech and that sort of thing that can be fun, but if you aren't really into the tech side of things and simply want to be a business person, get a paid solution, but go with Americommerce, you dont want to be "stuck" with just one store, you want to be able to have several stores, and figure out which one is doing the best, and shut down the stores that aren't.

      I think the most important feature in ecommerce is the multistore feature for that reason. Americommerce has that feature, but no other useable paid solutions do. OpenCart and Prestashop do, though plan on working on them a lot, or outsourcing the work, to get them the way you want them.

      MY TOP PAID CHOICE: AMERICOMMERCE

      //I might actually run this cart in the future, because I have less time to spend these days, although there really are some attractive free solutions coming up, if you can make the time investment.

      Hope this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author Weblover50
    Majento has its positives and negatives. I recommend Prestashop to these days if asked for an ecommerce solution. I think you should take a look.
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  • Profile picture of the author york
    Getting PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant is a huge undertaking. As for Bluehost or Hostgator, as much as I like them, do you really think they care if you are PCI Compliant? At $15 a month as long as you aren't taking up to much server capacity or abusing the TOS, they don't care. They can't. Look at their terms, this is up to you. And frankly, if there is a Data Breach, Blue Host won't care. And HostGator took Prestashop off their hosting for a while due to security issues.
    Our software works just as well with both paid and opensource carts. Further, you can think what ever you like about PCI compliance, but what you think is not real.

    From wikipedia:

    "PA-DSS was implemented in an effort to provide the definitive data standard for software vendors that develop payment applications."

    Key word here is "software vendors".

    Of course if YOU went a wrote up your own payment module, yes you would have to prove PCI compliance.

    Again just to clarify, the SOFTWARE VENDOR must prove PCI compliance, Prestashop and Opencart already did this, this is also verified by bluehost.com for even installing those carts on their systems FOR YOU. Yes, they install them FOR YOU.

    Bluehost.com is shared hosting on very secure servers, Prestashop and Opencart payment modules dont't store credit card information on the server, and all data between the cart and the payment processor is sent in ssl, that is the only way these payment processors will process payments, these facts prove PCI compliance.

    But again you have "the right" to think and believe whatever you would like.

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author malia
    Yes, Prestashop or OpenCart on Bluehost, via authorize.net, google checkout, or paypal are all PCI compliant, and you cannot change this fact.
    This is not completely accurate. Google checkout, paypal, yes. Authorize.net... depends on which integration method you are using.

    Understanding PCI Compliance: Payment Security, Customer Information - Authorize.Net

    I only know this because I run (again) a self hosted solution and the server integration for authorize.net had to be changed to be fully PCI compliant. It's a bit misleading to tell someone that a self hosted cart is PCI compliant because... it depends... on many factors.
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  • Profile picture of the author RMC
    Personally I want to control my eCommerce sites by myself. Personally I use OpenCart platform which is free, easy to modify and run fast. Magento is more for bigger businesses where you can rent dedicated serevers and buy expensive development.
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  • Profile picture of the author Intermission
    I have been reading through all these posts, hunting for the right solution for a company with about 1500 - 2000 products. This is someone else's site but I will be managing it and I am not a programmer. This is my first Ecommerce site.

    Only one person in this thread briefly touched on WooCommerce. This is the one I have been looking at as an alternative to Magento. Does anyone have much experience with this ecommerce platform?

    From what I have read here, starting with Magento may be 'biting off far more than I can chew' right now ...
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      Originally Posted by Intermission View Post

      From what I have read here, starting with Magento may be 'biting off far more than I can chew' right now ...
      I would go with a hosted solution that is PCI compliant already, like BigCommerce or AmeriCommerce. You can use either platform without knowing any PHP or HTML and they both have tons of powerful add-ons to help your market the store.
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  • Profile picture of the author ateep22
    anyone deal with x-cart at all? any feedback on that one?
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  • Profile picture of the author terencemag
    Surely you'll want to avoid Magento, if you don't want to maximize your profit in your ecommerce biz.
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    • Profile picture of the author Faelandaea
      I see this is an old thread, but it came at the top of Google when I was researching some drop ship options. I had to reply here to say how it amazes me how almost every post in this thread regarding the use of Magento is so completely and utterly wrong, even the ones by the "professionals".
      1. When I started my business, I had NEVER done Ecommerce before. I was a beginner.
      2. I have absolutely NO programming knowledge.
      3. I had NO money to invest, which is why I started a business in the first place. I needed the money and where I am at jobs are scarce.
      4. As a result of the above, I had to choose an open source, self hosted solution as I cannot afford the insane monthly fees for pre-packaged, Ecommerce hosting solutions. I just happened to have a great web provider of my own already paid up for a few years (Inmotion hosting) and so I installed Magento there to give it a try.
      5. Magento is NOT programmed to "break". REALLY??? Wow. Conspiracy theory much? My Magento has never broken.
      6. You do NOT need a programming team to meet your needs. Just by using Google and actually READING about something before I blindly install it I have successfully gotten a MULTITUDE of plugins to work. ALL of them are free, and I never had to pay for support. Well, correction . . . ONE plugin for SEO cost me 60 bucks. DEFINITELY not in the "thousands" range.
      7. I was able to adapt a theme and customize it to the perfect look and feel I wanted for my store and my target audience.
      8. I now run a successful clothing/accessory business that is completely drop-ship and beyond paying $200 every 2 years for my hosting, and the $60 I invested in the SEO plugin, I have not had to invest a single dime into the business. Again, proving you do NOT need "thousands" to run an Ecommerce, nor do you need "thousands" to run Magento. Such an implication is just uneducated and silly.

      To this date I have only had ONE tech issue, and it wasn't even Magento's fault, nor was it a plug-in's fault. USPS decided to change their API's twice since I opened my business. The part that frustrated me was when they did so, they require you to "test" new APIs for a long time before they go live, which left my Magento with a broken shipping API preventing my customers from completing a purchase. That was easily fixed by switching shipping carriers. Now I am back up and running smoothly again.

      The moral of me adding that in there is that, yes, tech issues WILL arise regardless of what platform you use. Do I think USPS is useless or conspiring to break my site? No. They just didn't fit my needs and so I changed based on a personal experience with them regarding my business needs. I will never say "Never use USPS". I'd rather stay positive and just say "Hey, UPS gave me great service options, if you want to check them out."

      So to those of you in this thread whining about Magento being "broken", or needing to be "professional" to run an Ecommerce, or needing to spend "thousands" to run a successful Ecommerce . . . . you are all absolutely wrong. Sorry to burst your bubble.

      This is my first post, by the way, and this looks like a great forum. I'll definitely be keeping an eye here and there and giving feedback
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  • Profile picture of the author VevoCart
    If you are a merchant and have no time dealing with IT related stuff, the hosted solution is right for you. so you can focus on business and needs no worries about software update/maintenance.

    By the way, magento does offer a hosted solution called margentogo, FYI
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    • Profile picture of the author rsykes
      "We on the board are aware that you are trying to sell your software." From a guy who ties to sell his "course" with every post? One hardly finds that level of arrogant corruption outside of Washington!
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  • Profile picture of the author VishalBhatt123
    According my point of view, I have also a eCommerce store in Magento. I never face such this type of problem. I am not technical person, even i don't know any technical term of Magento. But when ever i installed any Magento Extension, I" never face any problem.
    when I face this type of error or situation than i Just follow the instruction of Magento and my problem was solve out.
    S, It may work for some day and even not work some day then i need paid programmer for solving this error. This situation happen in all the eCommerce platform. So, I never migrate from one platform to other platform because i face some problem that problem are came at every platform.
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  • Profile picture of the author Simon Walker
    I suggest people should go for the custom store development so that they can understand the price of time and other things,
    Speaking from of experience Magento is a complete platform and if you need to improve then surely you have to invest same goes for all other platform. I am doing Magento extensions business from last 4 years and not only for this but for other platform, The thing is is you have to be wise in selecting the extensions and follow only one provider.
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  • Profile picture of the author amcg
    The biggest problem with ALL open cart solutions is that they are not PCI compliant once an outside hosting company is introduced to the equation. They also have to be continually updated with patches due to security vulnerabilities. Unless you are only using PayPal to process payments (which means you are likely only getting 1/2 to 1/3 of the sales you should be getting), you will end up paying more in monthly non-compliance fees than what BigCommerce costs.
    This nails it. Hosted is just better for those starting out in ecommerce. Validate the product and the business then move to the open source/own platform option.
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  • Profile picture of the author LABEShops
    I looked at every cart out there 2 years ago when I was making the switch from an older platform (though did not look at hosted solutions as I have no interest in letting someone else control my store). The deciding factor for me was which ones handle multi-stores from 1 admin panel as I was moving from 12 seperate storefronts on the other platform - just adding products in common on those stores was a pita! At that time, there were only 2 I could find - Magento and Opencart (though CS-Cart has also added this recently and I have a friend that raves about it). So I installed both and played with them extensively before I decided on opencart.

    The difference to me was ease of operation and customization. Magento I played with on and off for 6 months and did not have a fully configured store even after all that time (and I was just playing with the core code without any addons). Finding anything in their interface takes a lot more time and effort and trying to customize their template was a nightmare!

    On the other hand, I had my first store configured and running under opencart within 2 days! I've further customized it over time (I know enough php to be able to modify though cannot create from scratch) and now have 32 stores running under it with no regrets.

    All of the cart software will run out of the box with no modifications and just about all do a decent job of it. None will be 100% the way you want it even with addons unless you code a cart from scratch, but some times it is a matter of adjusting how you work (and sometimes finding that way works better) to suit the program instead of trying to change how the program works. I bought addons in the beginning I *thought* I needed and now never use so always recommend that someone works with the core program first before deciding what they really, really need to change. I think people get into the most trouble when they really don't know the system yet and try to change it. Give yourself time to learn the program inside and out and often you can find a different way than what you thought you really, really had.
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  • Profile picture of the author repricerexpress
    Horses for courses!! Magento is without doubt a brilliant ecommerce platform but it's not for the novice who wants to tinker and customise, unless of course, you pay certified professionals to that for you. Some great analogies in this thread but honestly, it sounds like you've picked the wrong platform for your needs.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdeveloperindia
    OP Magento is not like that you think,
    It's a great platform to handle large database (that is, more than one million products),
    Heavy traffic volume based on your but you need a good optimized server too.
    Also I guess you need a good Magento service provider or developer who can help you to setup your store correctly.
    One of my favorite guy on fiverr (http://www.fiverr.com/magentoco) help me to do these thing for me in very affordable price like $250 for standard store with multiple extensions.

    The platform is expensive that doesn't mean it's bed but it means the quality of your store is great!
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  • Profile picture of the author christinamikki
    Magneto is one of the best open source platforms which has rich features also user friendly.
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    90% of people that will tell you to use Magento are making a living off customizations or maintenance contracts for that software. IMHO, Magento sucks! It's not at all user friendly and it's an absolute resource hog. I've seen Magento stores that required two dedicated servers just to run and they still crashed regularly! You should only consider Magento if you have thousands of dollars to spend on plugins and customizations and need something extremely customized, but even then I would lean toward Wordpress/WooCommerce instead!

    The quickest and easiest way to get a store off the ground is a hosted solution. The two leaders right now for features vs. price are BigCommerce and 3D Cart. Both are solid carts with minimal bugs and are loaded with features. Hosted carts are usually the best option for "newbies" because they are EASY. You don't worry about hosting issues, software patches, etc.

    If you are determined to run your own shopping cart my highest recommendation would be Wordpress/WooCommerce. There are several themes and plugins that are made for the woocommerce plugin and working together they can form an extremely robust and modern looking shopping cart! Again, if you go this route you will have to deal with your own hosting and you will also have to deal with updates/customizations.

    Different people will give you different views here, but this is my 2 cents. I've been in ecommerce / internet marketing since 2003 and have used just about every major software out there!
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    StoreCoach.com - FREE TRAINING - Learn How to Build Your Own eCommerce Website
    My PROVEN ecommerce process, as seen on: Fox Business News, the NY Times & Flippa
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    • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
      I'll second your emotion about Bigcommerce.

      A LOT of our customers use and really love Bigcommerce. It's simple to get started with, and they have a lot of really beautiful (AND responsive, which is hugely important) themes that are easy to install right out of the box.

      Hope this helps!
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      • Profile picture of the author amcg
        Originally Posted by Solid Commerce View Post

        I'll second your emotion about Bigcommerce.

        A LOT of our customers use and really love Bigcommerce. It's simple to get started with, and they have a lot of really beautiful (AND responsive, which is hugely important) themes that are easy to install right out of the box.

        Hope this helps!
        I think so many people like BigCommerce is because of this reason - the product is great. The reason it's great is the people behind it built ecommerce software from the ground up. (Interspire)
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    • Profile picture of the author primeexample
      Originally Posted by dave_hermansen View Post


      The quickest and easiest way to get a store off the ground is a hosted solution. The two leaders right now for features vs. price are BigCommerce and 3D Cart. Both are solid carts with minimal bugs and are loaded with features. Hosted carts are usually the best option for "newbies" because they are EASY. You don't worry about hosting issues, software patches, etc.
      This is where you are dead wrong. Bigcommerce and 3Dcart are not leaders. Shopify rules the shopping cart hosting industry hands down. MagentoGo admitted defeat against Shopify because they could not compete with Shopify. Bigcommerce paid for the leftover crumbs MagentoGo is tossing away in Feb 2015.

      Also, I don't trust Bigcommerce. When they got caught lying about SEO expert Aaron Wall "certifying"' their shopping cart, that was the nail in their coffin for me. I recall back in 2010 when I was searching for a shopping cart, I emailed them a simple sales question and all of a sudden they swarmed my email with marketing messages begging me to try the platform with statements like "SEO certified by Aaron Wall" - which was a big fat lie according to Aaron Wall himself. smh. He has to ask them publicly to stop.
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  • Profile picture of the author originalposter
    For startups with limited products, I generally recommend Wordpress + Woocommerce. Woocommerce has grew dramatically over the past few years and its no longer what it used to be. It has a lot of modules/addons that allow developers to customize it easily. So the flexibility is there.

    However, it is still not as powerful and robust as Magento when it comes to a REAL ecommerce platform. Magento is still my top recommendation for clients who are looking to launch a serious ecommerce online store. The features and addons available for it is just so powerful that it can be developed to an extent similar to sites like bestbuy, amazons and more.
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    • Profile picture of the author leokoo
      Originally Posted by originalposter View Post

      For startups with limited products, I generally recommend Wordpress + Woocommerce. Woocommerce has grew dramatically over the past few years and its no longer what it used to be. It has a lot of modules/addons that allow developers to customize it easily. So the flexibility is there.

      However, it is still not as powerful and robust as Magento when it comes to a REAL ecommerce platform. Magento is still my top recommendation for clients who are looking to launch a serious ecommerce online store. The features and addons available for it is just so powerful that it can be developed to an extent similar to sites like bestbuy, amazons and more.
      What absolute nonsense is this? Magento is an absolute beast in terms of being a resource hog and with overpriced extensions that don't often get updated. Just do a study on the official Magento Extensions store

      Magento Connect - The Magento Extension Marketplace

      If you're an enterprise business, look no further than stuff like Hybris and Demandware. If you need something fast to test the market, Shopify is awesome at $29/mo onwards.

      However, if you need something in between, get yourself WooCommerce and be worry free
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  • Profile picture of the author Linnworks
    I personally think Magento is great, I think the original author of this post may have had issues with some extensions conflicting with each other.

    My suggestion is that if you have a lot of bespoke needs for your business then don't rely on several extensions but hire a Magento developer to create the features you need that will be compatible with each other.

    A lot of our clients at Linnworks use Magento as their shopping cart platform, other than working very well with our system it has a lot of flexibility and I personally believe is quite user friendly.

    All the best,

    Charlie McBroom
    eCommerce specialist at Linnworks
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  • Profile picture of the author satvikpatel
    I have used Magento to develop eCommerce stores for my clients. I am very satisfied with it. I have found only one issue that it takes so much time to load. But I have solved this using varnish cache.
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  • Profile picture of the author Simon Gwin
    Yes, Magento requires money for the hosting, themes or configuration, but nothing is free. So clearly understand your opportunities. If you don't understand anything in coding (at least basics) or have no skills to programming - and don't won't to hire a developer - of course it's better to choose something simpler.
    In all other cases Magento is great. It's flexible, has a huge number of extensions for every budget and needs, has lots of out-of-the box and is fully customizable.
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  • Profile picture of the author mtubuzz
    Don't make baseless comments over any e-commerce platform. A large number of people opt to use Magento over any other CMS. Also, It depends upon your need, you can opt for WooCommerce or OpenCart.
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    Magento CE provides 100-200% efficiency when implemented correctly, Shopify/BigCommerce 0-50%, Hybris 500-800%. The more efficient the solution the longer it takes to implement, so you have upfront cost vs medium to long term efficiency. Every platform has its pros and cons, each business needs to know where they want to compete and against who.

    Most of the problem is that people have too much emotional and financial capital invested in one platform - be it from the retailer or service provider side. Once you invest your emotional and financial capital in a platform it's difficult to unwind as you basically have to write it off. There is no correct platform - only the one that fits the needs of a particular business from cost to resource availability to experience on the technical and/or business process side. We are very experienced at analysing which is the most optimal for a business scenario - one of our specialities.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdeveloperindia
    Magento is not so expensive if you have good provider !!
    Checkout Warrior for Hire section
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  • Profile picture of the author euphoria
    Originally Posted by ryanjm View Post

    Just throwing this out there as a PSA for anyone that wants to build an Ecomm site for a small/medium sized business. I did a lot of research before I went with this platform, and I think it's been a mistake. While it offers a lot of flexibility and is scaleable, it is a nightmare of compatibility when you do try to customize it. Examples:

    Oh, you installed this great dropshipping extension, and now you want to add the ability to let customers use multiple coupons? You'll need an extension for that, and custom coding to get it to work with the other extension. Oh, you think the default checkout sucks (it does), and you want a 1-step checkout? $200 for the extension, plus custom coding to get it working with your other extensions to the tune of $200 flat fee (usually).

    It goes on and on. Literally almost every extension you install will have some sort of conflict with another extension and require the expertise of a programmer to get it working. The platform is just a money pit.

    From what I can tell, if I did it over again I would go with Shopify. Let someone else make sure all of the extensions work together properly and even if you are somewhat limited, for 99% of businesses what they offer is enough. It would have saved me a lot of start-up costs and headaches to go that route.
    Somebody ban this guy, he need to stop using a program that requires you to know what you're doing.
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    SEO Marketing, 15 Years Experience, SEOmarketingInvestment.Com
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    You have to check this out - and people think the service providers are on their side - this is the primary Magento forum now - magento 1.7 - Optimizing app/etc/local.xml - caching like Redis - Magento Stack Exchange - if they delete it again https://twitter.com/Serpyre/status/522391189740609536
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  • Profile picture of the author LudachrisGSX
    After reading though a lot of this thread and having set up a test install of Magento I'm starting to wonder if we might be better off with another solution. Not because Magento isn't a good product but because it looks like it requires a little more programmer resources than my company is able to put into it.

    We have 5 e-commerce sites that do about 25% of our company's business. It's not huge. They're really old OS Commerce and Yahoo Store installations. I manage all of them now and am somewhat familiar with the old OSC code, but I'm not a programmer. I am great at customizing Wordpress, vBulletin, Xenforo, and other scripts through the UI and even when a little bit of programming is needed, but trying to troubleshoot extensions for Magento is a little out of my league. We are looking to convert all of our sites over to a new script and my boss is willing to spend some money to do it, and at the moment we've identified Magento as the best solution. But after playing with it and seeing what developers charge for setting up a store I'm concerned that we'll need to keep paying developers to work on the sites long after they're built.

    Whatever script we go with we will have our Ruby on Rails developer build a bridge from our custom CRM/Product Database to populate the e-commerce database. We first looked at Spree but that seems like it would require similar developer resources. In an ideal world we'd use a script with multi-site capabilities to make it easier to maintain all the sites. Each site has roughly 12-20k products listed in various categories with some overlap. The sites get anywhere from 10-50 orders per day. Magento is looking like it might require more developer resources than I had anticipated. I'd like a solution that I can go in and manage most of it, with a little help of developers when I get stuck, as opposed to having to hire developers any time an extension has to be added or tweaked.

    So what would be the closest alternative to Magento in terms of similar features and functionality, available extensions, available themes, but is a little easier to manage for someone who isn't a programmer or a budget to pay developers for everything? Would that be Prestashop, Opencart, Americommerce, BigCommerce? I would want something where we can find good themes available, buy one, then modify it to fit our branding.
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    • Profile picture of the author serpyre
      Originally Posted by LudachrisGSX View Post

      After reading though a lot of this thread and having set up a test install of Magento I'm starting to wonder if we might be better off with another solution. Not because Magento isn't a good product but because it looks like it requires a little more programmer resources than my company is able to put into it.
      You are falling in to the trap of any small business platform - although Magento is more excessive - you don't need programmers or service providers - the most efficient with Magento are close to clean installs. You can read the following comments from ourselves.

      ecommerce platforms - Page 2
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      • Profile picture of the author LudachrisGSX
        Originally Posted by serpyre View Post

        You are falling in to the trap of any small business platform - although Magento is more excessive - you don't need programmers or service providers - the most efficient with Magento are close to clean installs. You can read the following comments from ourselves.

        ecommerce platforms - Page 2
        It just seems like Magento is built more for developers, or that you really need a developer available to do what someone with lesser coding skills can do in other scripts. We want to be able to install a few extensions without having to pay developers to do it all for us, just as you can do with other scripts like Wordpress, Joomla, vBulletin, etc. I would rather keep it close to a stock install just for maintenance and core script upgrades, but you always have to install some extensions to fit your needs and use a theme that fits your industry, as you don't want your site looking like a bunch of other stock Magento stores.

        I'm not completely ruling out Magento, I just want to make sure we don't dump a ton of money into it only to find out later that we are stuck having to pay developers to do a lot of the work that we could do ourselves with some alternative scripts out there. It's got to be secure, it's got to be modern coding standards, it's got to be flexible and scalable, it's got to be something we can bridge to our system, PCI Compliant, it's got to be easily customizable via templating/theming, etc. Magento seems like the best option out there, but it also seems like one that is built more for those who have a developer or a team of developers, at least from the test install I did and everything I've read. Maybe I just need to get past the steep learning curve.
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      • Profile picture of the author LudachrisGSX
        Originally Posted by serpyre View Post

        You are falling in to the trap of any small business platform - although Magento is more excessive - you don't need programmers or service providers - the most efficient with Magento are close to clean installs. You can read the following comments from ourselves.

        ecommerce platforms - Page 2
        I've found your posts on a few forums talking about efficiency, but nobody else tends to talk about it - can you explain or point me to a resource that explains how that efficiency is calculated?
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  • Profile picture of the author LudachrisGSX
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
      There are multiple platforms that allow for multi-store capabilities right out of the box. For example both OpenCart and Prestashop allow it and are easier to use IMO than Magento. If you are looking for hosted, then check out Americommerce. Out of all the hosted carts it is probably the most powerful and it allows for multi-store as well. You just pay an extra $30 a month per extra store front.

      I don't care what any expert purports or says, if you are having trouble getting your cart up and going, loading fast and working for you, it is not for you. No matter how many "Experts" tell you its the right one for you.

      What I like about Americommerce?

      Hosted so you don't need to deal with any of that nonsense.
      Multi-store out of the box for an extra fee
      Subscription/recurring available out of the box, no extra charge
      PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant
      Mobile ready
      Design by widgets
      Strong wholesale functionality

      What I don't like about Americommerce
      ASP based so it is a tad bit slower then the PHP carts out there, but client sites seem to load just fine
      Learning curve is a bit high. It is not as easy to use as Shopify or BigCommerce but easier than magento.
      Small to non-existent third party contributions. Mailchimp is the only outside email provider they integrate with. Americommerce wants to charge for API access which scares away developers.

      They got bought by Capital One so I am unsure if this is a good or bad thing yet.

      If you are doing things through rails, obviously you need to check out Spree and Shopify. If I am correct, most of the checkout functionality developed in rails has been contributed by shopify. Spree is much more bare bones which is why a lot of developers like it as its easier to build on. All of those subscription companies (ex. bark box) are built on spree.

      Check out Opencart, Prestashop and Americommerce and see if those work for you. Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author LudachrisGSX
    Thanks a ton for the reply... the only thing that scares me with the hosted solutions is the potential for being limited on design and widgets. For instance, we'll need a custom product filter built by a developer right out of the gate that allows people to select multiple attributes related to the product they need to narrow down the potential results. I know this can be done in Magento (though I've found that attributes are a little tricky in that solution) but not sure if we'd run into trouble with the hosted solutions.

    And though we do use a developer for our RoR system, we don't want to overload him with website work. We simply want him to build a bridge and fix issues when they arise. We need him focused on development for our system, not the website. And we don't want to get into a situation where we have a new website/set of websites that requires developer help to make most changes, big and small. I'd rather have a system where we use developers build it out initially but afterwards we can plug in extensions and tweak the look and feel with "some" programming when necessary, but I'd like to really limit the need for developers.

    And damn, Magento developers are expensive - or at least trying to get a website built in Magento is expensive, which tells me that it's pretty darn complex. And that's a little scary.

    I'll check out those options.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris19h
    WordPress is definitely the way you want to go. Woocommerce is extremely well documented, extensible, and supported. When you run into an issue or need to find a developer you will have many options available. With magento its just not as supported and not as many developers work with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author ShristiJohn
    Well, According to my personal opinion, The Magento platform is an open source ecommerce platform which means you can change the code and customized as per your needs. It also provides SEO friendly services which are really helpful for your business.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lipipaliwal
    Banned
    Personally, I would like to prefer Magento. Because, Magento ecommerce platform is created responsively, which are considered seamlessly viewable on smartphones, tablets, along with other mobile phones. This considers a consumer buying trend that is constantly on the move toward mobile usage (and which we'll likely notice really in years in order to come).
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  • Profile picture of the author seomadguy
    Magento is the best solution for now just because it has the largest community and you can find any extension to achieve almost all your custom requirements.
    If you do not have any experience to install Magento, choose a hosting etc and you do not have a budget to hire someone for this, then definitely you should check any SaaS solutions like shopify or bigcommerce.
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  • Profile picture of the author NewParadigm
    what are the transaction fees for shopify?
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    In a moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

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